


Wood Stains

by EmmaArthur



Series: Whumptober 2019 [26]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Bittersweet, Canon Disabled Character, Epilepsy, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, M/M, Nerve Damage, Nightmares, PTSD, Plus other disabilities, Sort Of, Whumptober, more or less, recovering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-08 08:03:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21232505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmaArthur/pseuds/EmmaArthur
Summary: The ceiling of the cabin is utterly boring, Alex decides, staring at it from his position on the floor. He's been staring at it a lot in the past three months.





	Wood Stains

**Author's Note:**

> Whumptober day 29: **Numb**.
> 
> This is more...let's say hopeful, than I thought it would be. Which means that it went pretty far off prompt again.
> 
> [injuries, epilepsy, PTSD, trauma, night terrors, mentions of death and killing]

The ceiling of the cabin is utterly boring, Alex decides, staring at it from his position on the floor. He's been staring at it a lot in the past three months. It's made of plain, varnished stained wood, just like the wall and the floor, and Alex is getting seriously tired of it.

It may be because the only times he's stepped outside in three months were to replace the wood with the sterilized white of hospital walls. He's tired of it.

He's tired, period.

“You back?” Michael asks softly, from his kneeling position beside him, and Alex focuses his eyes on him. He nods once.

“Can you speak?”

Alex swallows before he answers. “Yes.” They go through this after every seizures, several times a day, and he wants to hate it, but he can't. He can't hate Michael showing how much he cares.

He does hate the reason, though. He hates the times when he wakes up from a seizure completely disoriented and unable to speak, or with his memories scrambled. He hates when he loses whole hours, or when the seizure happens to fast to lie down and he hits something on the way down.

He hates that it scares Michael every time. He hates that most of all. But this, the slight slump of Michael's shoulders in relief when Alex shows him he's okay, the way he slides a pillow under Alex's head, he can't hate that.

The ceiling is the easiest thing to hate about all this.

“Do you want me to move you to the couch?” Michael asks.

Alex shakes his head slowly. It will take too much out of his body right now, energy he needs to get back up later. The floor is fine. It could be more padded, but Alex has laid in worse places.

“Take your time,” Michael says. “Rest.”

“Um,” Alex nods, closing his eyes.

He doesn't fall asleep, but he stops fighting the fog in his brain. He's so tired.

Michael doesn't stop watching over him, though he moves to the kitchen table to start cooking. He's been amazing through it all. They'd barely started dating when Alex was kidnapped by his father, but Michael didn't even hesitate before appointing himself Alex's caretaker when he was discharged from the hospital, sparing him another extended stay in the rehab center. Alex is still waiting for him to get tired of caring for Alex day in and day out, but he still isn't.

They talk instead. A lot. It's the best−only−way they've found to not only repair their relationship, though the dynamics of that have shifted heavily, but also to work through this. The recovery process. The...adjustment process. It's a hard one.

The most obvious changes are not the toughest to adapt to. There's the cabin layout, which they've changed completely to accommodate a wheelchair, for the days when walking is too much to handle. Michael has taken an indefinite leave from his job, so he's making modifications around the house whenever Alex doesn't need him. He rarely goes out, and when he does, Kyle or Liz come over to babysit. Alex can't be left alone during a seizure, which means that he can't be left alone at all, since they don't have the good taste to come with a schedule.

There are the PT sessions every other day, grueling and painful, but slowly improving his mobility. Alex once thought losing a leg was the end of his life. He once thought having to learn how to walk again would be the hardest physical thing he'd ever do. He was wrong.

He's learned that only death can be the end of life. He's still alive.

Grunting, he rolls to his side and uses his left arm to lever himself to a sitting position.

“Ready to get up?” Michael asks.

“Yeah,” Alex answers, his voice weaker than he'd like. He clears his throat.

“Breakfast is on the table.” Michael comes over and helps him stand up, supporting him until Alex has found his footing. The seizure caught him just out of the bathroom, so he's already dressed and wearing his prosthetic. It's a relief, because he doesn't have the energy to do more than limp to the table and sit down.

His plate has scrambled eggs already cut into pieces and a buttered toast. Alex pours himself some orange juice with a barely shaking hand, only sparing a quick envious glance toward Michael's coffee mug. Coffee has been much harder to give up than alcohol, but epilepsy meds are unforgiving.

Speaking of which, Michael puts the medicine bag on the table and rummages through to find Alex's carefully labeled pill organizer. He's become a goddamn walking pharmacy. Alex obediently pops the ridiculous number of morning pills into his mouth, in three gos, and washes them down with juice.

“Thank you,” he gives Michael as bright a smile as he can muster.

“You're welcome,” Michael beams at him.

This. This right there is what makes it all worth it, for both of them. It doesn't matter how tough the rest of it is.

Alex digs into his plate, still a little awkward with his left hand. Seizures cut his appetite, but he forces the whole egg down anyway, knowing he needs the nutriments.

“So, free day today,” Michael says.

“What are you going to do?” Alex asks. Days when they don't have to drive to the hospital or have Alex's physical therapist over are few, between PT, occupational therapy, medical appointments and now both of their shrink appointments.

“I was thinking a slow morning,” Michael answers. “Cuddling? In bed or on the couch, we can put the TV on.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Alex smiles. He knows it wouldn't be Michael's first choice for a day off. Michael is an outdoor person, someone who needs to move. But he has to face the fact that he's Michael's full time job now, instead of wishing things were different.

And a morning in bed is probably all he can handle. “Maybe this afternoon we can go for a walk,” he says.

Michael just nods, not committing to anything. It's not that he doesn't want to, Alex knows. But plans get derailed by so many things these days. Mostly seizures. Sometimes pain, or fatigue. Usually a combination of those.

“What are you thinking about?” Michael asks when they're both lying on the bed, on top of the covers.

Alex's prosthesis is off, and his numb right arm is tucked into the pocket of his hoodie. Like this, he's finally free to take the initiative.

“That I love you,” he answers, scooting close to Michael. He leans in to kiss him.

“Oh, really?” Michael kisses him back, slipping his arm around Alex's waist.

Alex nods, flushed. “And I'm very grateful,” he adds, lining Michael's jawline with little kisses.

“Alex−” Michael pushes him back gently.

“No. I mean it this way too,” Alex says seriously. They've had many conversations, about Alex's discomfort with everything Michael does for him, everything he's given up. It's such a layered subject.

“Okay,” Michael murmurs. “I won't ask you to stop. But don't do it because you're grateful.”

They hit rock bottom, almost simultaneously, about a month after Alex came home. It was a dark time for both of them. Alex was too centered on his own issues−with good reasons−to realize Michael's guilt and fear over what he did to get Alex back, a feat Alex has no memory of. He has very little memories of his stay at the abandoned prison, beyond his father's face. The head wound took a lot of memories with it, the days leading up to the injury but also random things that Alex only realizes he's lost when it comes up in a conversation.

So he didn't notice Michael losing grip of things. He hid it well, not wanting to bother Alex. He bottled everything up and didn't show anything, until it wasn't possible anymore.

“I'm grateful of the little things,” Alex says.

He knows that sometimes still, all Michael can see is that prison, bodies littering the floor, people he killed brutally, and Alex's barely alive form in his lap.

“Toast for breakfast.”

He wakes up when Michael screams in his pillow, just like Michael always wakes up when Alex has a nightmare. Only if he's just out of a seizure, or on a bad night, he doesn't always have the energy to do more than squeeze Michael's hand.

“How strikingly beautiful your face is.”

He tries to imagine what he would do if their places were exchanged, if Michael was the one who'd been taken, but it just brings tears to his eyes. Alex is accommodating to his new situation, even if it's slow and difficult. But he knows how hard it is for Michael to see him like this. To care for him like this. He wonders if it's too much, often, if he should find some kind of support system, but there are few options, beside the rehab center and then−what, assisted living?

“Feeling the sun on my face.”

Isobel was the one who came when Michael collapsed, exhausted, after too many nights without sleep. Alex was all kind of embarrassed, when she took over and took care of both of them for a while, but she was amazing at it. Liz, Maria, even Kyle, they do their best, but Alex can always feel them wish things were different, that they had their old friend back, that they could hang out at the Wild Pony together and have beers without a care in the world. But Isobel is something else. She doesn't have a reference point for Alex from before, she doesn't compare him and find him lacking.

“Friends.”

Alex went down gradually. It was every piece of bad news from the doctor. Being told he wouldn't regain much function in his arm. Being told his brain damage would never go away. It was discovering new things he could do every day, new memories he'd forgotten, new words he couldn't seem to speak. It was the complete loss of his hard-earned independence, the obstacles in his way everywhere, the pity in everyone's eyes. He got to learn to walk with a prosthesis unbothered, almost on his own, but this time his limitations are splayed out for every one of his friends to see.

It was finding himself back in that cell, every time he closed his eyes. It was being touched and probed without permission, when even the idea of someone coming close made him flinched. It was throwing up at the clicking of keys in a pocket, that sounded too much like the chains of shackles.

It was losing himself.

“You. You being here.”

Isobel sat them down−well, she let Alex lie down instead, but she metaphorically sat them down−and told them to talk. And it helped. It actually, amazingly helped.

They'd both needed someone to talk to. They agreed to try therapy, for both of them, beyond the couple of useless hospital sessions Alex had been through. They booked same-time appointments with different therapists at the hospital.

Alex came out with a couple of line added to his endless med prescription, but it was worth it. And it was even more worth it to just take the time to talk between themselves. Let out the frustrations in a controlled setting, make sure they agree on the best way to do things.

“I'm real grateful for that, too,” Michael says with a teary smile. “That you're here.”

Alex runs his hand down his face. “That we're together.”

They've gotten _I couldn't have done this without you_ out of the way a while ago. It's very true, on Alex's part, but it takes other meanings, when it becomes this literal. It's too loaded.

“That we're together,” Michael nods. “I love you so much.”

It's not easy. But opening up paved the way for Alex to start accepting this new state of things.  For both of them, really. They don't think of the future anymore, they don't dread the years of pain and hurt and more of the same ahead, and they don't dream of a time when Alex is healthy and abled like before. They take it one step at a time.

“I love you too,” Alex murmurs.

T he wood stains up on the ceiling are still here, but Alex only has eyes for Michael's face.

Maybe things will improve. Maybe they won't.

They'll live regardless.

**Author's Note:**

> Tomorrow's fic is going to be set in this series as well. I hope you liked it!


End file.
